Bellingcat was started on 15th July 2014, funded by a Kickstarter campaign, just 2 days before the MH17 tragedy by Higgins, formerly known as Brown Moses, has a long track record for selling his ‘citizen journalist reports‘ to anyone willing to Eliot Higginspay. Who exactly pays is something Higgins has always been tight-lipped about, from 2013 he received a’£5,000 donation, which he says is from an anonymous source‘. Back when he called himself Brown Moses, Eliot, from South Wigston, near Leicester, the United Kingdom, was advertising what £250 could buy –

– The £100 reward, and a video blog dedicated to you, or an individual/organisation of your choice, with a 10 second dedication at the start and end of the video. Also, a note of personal thanks sent from me to you, as well as inclusion on the page of thanks. I reserve the right to exclude offensive organisations or individuals.

Facebook and Twitter have signed up to a coalition of news organisations aimed at improving reporting from social media and tackling fake news.

Channel 4 News, the Telegraph, the New York Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, ABC News in Australia and Agence France-Presse are among more than 20 news organisations to have signed up to the partner network, which is being organised through Google-backed First Draft.

The involvement of Facebook in particular is seen as significant given its huge role in the distribution and gathering of news, as well as growing concerns about its role in spreading fake stories and its approach to what can and can’t be posted on its platform.

The partner network is designed to help news organisations work with the tech companies to improve newsgathering, and make verification of information from social media more effective and easier to access.

It also hopes to improve the experience of eyewitnesses contacted by news organisations, and help social media users assess news they find on networks.

Áine Kerr, Facebook’s journalism partnerships manager, said the network would help it support reporters in using Facebook to find and distribute news more effectively.

“The network will help Facebook showcase the products, tools and services we have built for journalists but also ensure we are constantly learning about how to improve them based on feedback from newsrooms,” she said. “We want to ensure we are building opportunities to learn from the industry and to ensure we continually hear their questions and feedback.”

The members of the partner network will develop guidelines for best practice, but the recommendations will not be binding.

First Draft operates as a coalition of organisations specialising in social media newsgathering and verification, including News Corp-owned Storyful, Elliot Higgins’ Bellingcat and Reportedly.

First Draft managing director Jenni Sargent said: “First Draft already works so closely with both news organisations and social platforms that we feel uniquely positioned to coordinate efforts and facilitate real progress in tackling some of the key challenges facing journalists and their audiences.”

Other organisations joining the network include Al Jazeera’s AJ+, Breaking News, International Business Times UK, Reveal project, Euronews, Amnesty International, European Journalism Centre and American Press Institute.

There have been two new developments in the long-awaited criminal investigation report into MH17 over the last couple of weeks. Though you might’ve read about one, you’re far less likely to have heard about the other — more important — one.

What could be seen as an interim report on the progress of the criminal investigation into the downing of MH17 wasn’t announced at a big press conference, nor did it grab the headlines in the main corporate media outlets. Signed by Fred Westerbeke, the Dutch prosecutor leading the international Joint Investigation Team (JIT) investigating MH17, the report took the form of a letter sent to family members of the victims.

But not all family members received the letter. In what has all the appearances of having been an incredibly insensitive and vindictive move by someone, Denise Kenke, daughter of Willem Grootscholten, one of the victims of the tragedy, didn’t hear about the interim report either. Not first hand, at least.

Miss Kenke is the only family member to have lodged a case charging the Ukraine Government with culpable negligence at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). An 11-page application was filed as early as November 17, 2014. And if that’s another thing you didn’t hear from in the corporate media, it might be because the ECHR has imposed a blackout covering all details of the case, which also prevents website access.

You could be forgiven for thinking a blackout of information on such a high-profile case might be something British corporate hacks would be clawing at each other to get to the bottom of. But no, they have shown as little interest in that as they have in the Fred Westerbeke letter.

TIME TO LET A DEAD CAT OUT OF THE BAG

That’s not to say two of Britain’s leading smarmsheets didn’t report anything on MH17 this week. The Independent and the Guardian both published stories on Wednesday, February 24th. And, by some amazing coincidence, both stories centred on the completely different, unofficial report.

So similar were the stories conjured up by Lizzie Dearden and Alec Luhn they could have been penned by Wonderland twins, Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Not only are both centred round a Bellingcat report on MH17, released the week following Westerbeke’s letter, but both appeared on the same day within hours of one another. And, surprise, surprise, both lend support to the Bellingcat accusation that Russia was behind the downing of the plane. But the real surprise is that there was no mention by either media outlet of the fact the Westerbeke letter makes a point of discounting the re-churned ‘evidence’ contained in the Bellingcat report, despite the Guardian story referring to the letter. Or perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise at all.

On December 26, 2015 Bellingcat has submitted a draft report to the JIT. The report has been gathered using social media and other public Internet sources, include information about members of a Russian military unit with, according to Bellingcat, a possible BUK-missile system in Ukraine.”
Fred Westerbeke

In total, Westerbeke mentions Bellingcat by name no less than eight times in his letter, even if it was only to eventually conclude the report was a load of cobblers.

No evidence of direct involvement of individual members of this unit at the shooting of the MH17 follows from the report of Bellingcat.”
Fred Westerbeke

You wouldn’t have guessed that from reading Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The Independent report opened with this little insight.

The missile system used to down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was transported into Ukraine by Russian soldiers with “high-level” authorisation, a new report has claimed.”
Lizzie Dearden

Not to be outdone, in the Guardian’s pick’n’mix Alec Luhn chooses to meld Fred Westerbeke’s letter with Bellingcat’s report, in order to lend the latter more credence, amazingly enough.

The head of the MH17 investigation, Fred Westerbeke, told victims’ families in a letter last week that finding and prosecuting those responsible “could take a long time”. But the new report raises the likelihood that “justice could be served”, Bellingcat head Eliot Higgins told the Guardian. Although names were changed and faces blurred in the public report, the identities were provided in a version given to Dutch prosecutors in December.”
Alec Luhn

All this in spite of the fact Fred Westerbeke seeks to emphasise — as part of his reason for sending the letter — his intention of clarifying any confusion some family members of the victims might suffer from believing evidence like Bellingcat’s is solid enough to be used in a court of law.

Recently, the Dutch Minister of Security and Justice informed the Lower House of radar and satellite data, the research collective Bellingcat and prosecution capabilities. The same issues are also discussed in a public hearing in the House. I noticed that among family members of the deceased there are still questions about this.”
Fred Westerbeke

Unfortunately, parts of the English translation from the original Dutch are very poor. Nevertheless, for both Independent and the Guardian journalists to completely misinform their readers by repeating the discounted evidence raised in the Bellingcat report is nothing less than despicable.

To read the full Independent and Guardian articles follow the links: MH17: Buk missile system used to down plane ‘transported to Ukraine rebels by Russian soldiers’, report claims and MH17 report identifies Russian soldiers suspected of downing plane in Ukraine.

To judge by the translation it certainly looks as though the Westerbeke letter was cobbled together in bit of a rush. Rather than take the Bellingcat ‘report’ seriously journalists should be asking why such an experienced prosecutor as Westerbeke felt the urgent need to address questions about the Bellingcat ‘research’ he noticed some families of the victims feel haven’t been answered satisfactorily.

Most likely it was due to a real concern for those families, as they have been bombarded with contradictions, lies and disinformation over the last eighteen months, coming mainly from the corporate media. References mentioning Bellingcat specifically — as opposed to other sources — suggest there was information indicating Eliot Higgins was about to release his ‘evidence’ prematurely and Westerbeke decided to pre-empt it. The pain of reading another bag of disinformation produced by the dead cat factory could cause a lot of unnecessary distress.

Westerbeke may have assumed experienced journalists would realise it isn’t part of his remit to judge whether the conclusions Eliot Higgins reaches from looking at his own flawed evidence are right or wrong. The job of the international investigating team is to consider what evidence is admissible in a court of law, and what is most likely to bring about a successful prosecution, should the culprits be identified and brought to justice.

The Bellingcat research collective, or whatever it now calls itself, amounts to little more than one neo-con conspiracy nut being exploited being by Western intelligence agencies to spread disinformation.

What is particularly contemptible about the Guardian and Independent stories is that neither shows any respect for the families of the victims. The journalists involved didn’t even consider how helping Eliot Higgins throw another dead cat on the table might affect their feelings.

But through the fog of lies, propaganda and confusion being created around MH17, one thing is that is becoming abundantly clear, the international Joint Investigation Team charged with investigating the crime is coming under increasing pressure to reach the ‘right’ verdict, which has Russia taking the fall. Bellingcat is just one more tool being used to apply that pressure. The fact that Independent and Guardian journalists are now also allowing themselves to be used as tools should be a cause of great concern to us all.

Consortium News: Here’s what Robert Parry has to say about Bellingcat.
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thebloodneverdried
April 24, 2016
Cui bono? Nobody. So whoever shot it down probably didn’t know it was a passenger plane. What was a passenger plane doing flying through a war zone anyway? Ukrainian authoroties would’ve had to have known. & maybe they just didn’t warn them not to take that route. Anyway, nice job, America, on the latest regime change operation. Those always work out so well, don’t they…
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sinalohr
July 15, 2016
Cui bono? The west benefits in blaming russia and so called “prorussian” Ukrainian rebels.
Didnt you noticed the russophobic actions all over state/commercial western medias?
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Dominic
March 13, 2016
On the MH17 story the credibility of the Russian state was finally blown out of the water as if a torpedo had hit its magazine. All sensible normal people with any knowledge of the Russian media already knew before this that they had moved from anti-western spin to bare faced lies following the Crimean Anschluss and the resulting sanctions, but in the press conference on MH17, so diligently reported on by Elliot Higgins, it was the Ministry of Defence (with Putin at its head) that told the lies and brazenly presented the fabrications.
I would be happy for anyone to let me know what new insight persuaded Russia and its state-controlled media that they were wrong about their original theory, presented at the press conference, that MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter plane and changed to saying that it was a Buk missile, but fired from Ukrainian controlled territory. Eliot Higgins has explained (with publicly available information) why. Because they painted themselves into a corner.
THE MOST OBVIOUS FAKED IMAGE in the press conference was a squiggly line which they said was the flight path, without explaining why it started from a direction due west and not from Amsterdam (I checked it myself). No one else in the world agrees with that peculiar flight path.
These fabrications have put the final nail in the coffin for Russia’s side of the story, (no need to consider the laughable photoshopped “satellite image” of the fighter plane firing the missile) and yet Off Guardian is bringing the zombie back to life.
The Joint Investigation Team was perfectly correct in taking pains to point out thet none of their conclusions would rely on information from Bellingcat. None of mine rely on it either but it is extremely useful.
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Eric_B
March 16, 2016
The Russian MoD never stated that a Ukrainian plane had shot down MH17.
You should probably be reading statements more carefully.
Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat are a joke.
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Drago Varsas
June 11, 2016
Lets start from the beginning and the beginning in Ukraine was fascists and Neo-Nazis taking over Ukraine in a bloody CIA organized coup. Motive? See the Wolfowitz doctrine ( the original version, not the modified version). Read also “The Grand Chess Board” by Brezinsky. The motive is clear: Destabilize Russia, dominate Russia and China. Now to MH17. 10 questions asked by the Russian military which the fascist West is refusing to answer. Nor is the regime in Kiev willing to answer those question. Google it and you know the questions. A good video about MH17 was made by James Corbett. Watch it. Lets move forward. A Russian buk allegedly downed by Russians in Ukraine. In order to do this a buk system was smuggled from Russia to Ukraine and back to Russia and the OSCE guarding the border saw nothing. Nor American spy satellites or drones. The motive? The motive sucks. Now lets move to the claims by the Kiev junta. The Kiev junta accused Russia of smuggling a buk system ( at least 3 different equipment ) from Russia to Ukrine and back to Russia. On their website they had the picture of the “Russian” buk 312. Well, unfortunately buk 312 was a Ukrainian buk. Ten we have the non-disclosure agreement between Ukraine, Netherlands, Australia and UK. Not Malaysia. How come? And why would the prime suspect, Ukraine being part of the non-disclosure agreement? Lets move to the facts we have. The first to arrive at the scene of the crashed MH17 was a OSCE inspector frm Canada stating it looks lke MH17 was shot down by heavy machine-gun fire from a military plane. Looking at the damage we see the biggest damage was done to the pilots cockpit. Not a place a buk missile will seek. Watching the holes we entry and exit holes. Many are perfectly round. Then we have witnesses seing Ukrainian SU-25 close to MH17 before it was shot down but zero witness with regards to a buk missile trail. MH17 was burning for hours after crashing. This would not happen if MH17 ws hit by a buk missile. All the fuel would be consumed at once. I personally have screen captures from flightradar showing that after MH17 was hit, it didn’t loose altitude for the next 2 minutes. Then it went off radar. If hit by a buk missile the plane would loose tremendous altitude while falling to the ground. We know the empire lies? Don’t we? Vietnam: The gulf of Tonkin lie. Iraq: The incubator lie. Iraq 2003 the Saddam has WMD lie. 2011 the Gaddafi killing his own people lie and many many more since 240 years the empire is waging war 92% of the time and always based on lies. I had enough of the empires lies and mass-murders.
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Dominic
March 13, 2016
OG, RT what’s the difference? It is hard to believe that you have no Russian connection. (This is just to test if comment is really free on this site).
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O Lucky Man!
March 5, 2016
Bellingcat would simply be bizarre, perverse, laughable if it wasn’t for the kind of implications exposed here. I remember reading Nick Davies’ Flat Earth some years back and having my eyes opened as to how limited the sources of news have become, almost everything that any major outlet uses is filtered through two or three major agencies or gleaned from press release spin. Budgets for investigative journalism are now just a quaint antique of the 20th century.
The Bellingcat method takes this towards its logical conclusion. A single person is charged with the authority to manufacture the news feed for a whole swathe of the media on a given subject. So much easier to manage the message. If there are enough people consuming your news at a surface skim level what’s the difference between a bloke on the internet in his bedroom and a qualified/ official/ ministry of defence/ team/ report/ assessment? Nothing. The surface is all that counts. The headline. The big deceit, the hypnotists trick.
How many spend time to look into these things for themselves? 10%? 5%? Less than that? So easy to perpetrate this credulous nonsense to set the tone, the agenda, spread the psychic pollution. I mean I can still sit here and laugh at it, how reality has become more perverse than any satire I could have imagined twenty years back. Why such a ridiculous game? Why not just lie to our faces? Plausible deniability is the shrine at which all this is manifested. Here is our patsy who can simply be faded away wraithlike if ever the * hits the fan. What a hollowed out worthless pantomime.
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Paolo
March 1, 2016
I wonder which “crowd” is crowd funding Bellingcat. I suspect its a rather small one. Can one donor still be referred to as a crowd?
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Tom Lowe
March 1, 2016
UK has become the desert island in Lord Of The Flies. No rule of law is left there. Nothing but utter legal chaos obtains in UK today.
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Sarah
February 29, 2016
What I don’t understand about the likes of Higgins & the other authors that write BS is when the SHTF (thanks to their propaganda) they will all be in the same boat as the rest of us. The only ones safe will be the elites and I doubt they will save a bunker place for Higgins and his mum.
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Allan Saunders
February 29, 2016
With luck Mr Higgins will soon return to the last job he did before becoming a propaganda whore, namely selling ladies’ underwear.
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Shelly
February 29, 2016
I love bellingcat. Whatever he claims I can be sure the opposite is true.
Also he is part funded by Google which tells you a lot about Google.
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In 2016, I’ll be returning to my country of the UK, and there’s a man I’d certainly like to meet for an interview. While I was working on the scene from the war in Eliot Higgins 2Donbass, Eliot Higgins, of Bellingcat, was the man sitting on a sofa taking, and manipulating, YouTube videos (including my own) of Donbass, MH17, Syria, using them to disseminate misinformation, lies, to the world.

However, he’s unlikely ever to agree to an interview with me, because, you see, Higgins, from the UK, born 1979, avoids sources who may raise uncomfortable questions much like critics have accused his work of avoiding basis in science, or fact (see below for more on that).

So, who exactly is Eliot Higgins? The man western media fawn over to the extent you may think it’s Eliot’s own mum writing the press, with headlines like ‘Putin’s Fullscreen capture 28022016 123353.bmpMH17 Nemesis‘ and ‘One-Man Intelligence Unit‘ (and that, enthusiastically promoted by the UK government in Ukraine, and not only them – US, Estonian government sources and more, open fans of his work).

Well, this is how a standard Eliot Higgins piece, and they are manifold, begins, in the western press – ‘As rockets fell in Syria Eliot Higgins was asleep at his house 2,300 miles away, in Leicester. He woke a few hours later, roused his toddler daughter, Ela, and padded downstairs to make her porridge.’

That from the Telegraph, March 29th, 2014. Higgins affectionately portrayed as a kind of Winnie the Pooh meets a Beautiful Mind as he goes on to crack the enigma which had eluded the world etc etc.

Here, the Independent from January 18th, 2015 –

Eliot Higgins 1‘Any of us can pause a YouTube video or find an old friend on Facebook. But only one man has used these simple online tools to expose the world’s darkest secrets. No wonder everyone from the police to Google wants a piece of the blogger from Leicester.’

Newsweek – from June 2015 –

‘Sipping a can of beer and devouring french fries in a Brussels hotel room, Eliot Higgins doesn’t look like the type to get involved in armed conflicts. The Englishman has a baby face, slumped shoulders and a soft Midlands accent. But over the past three years, the 36-year-old former administrator and obsessive gamer has spent hundreds of hours scouring the Internet to find out the truth about faraway wars – from the use of chemical weapons in Syria to Russian troops invading Ukraine – all from the comfort of his couch.’

But what if it’s not really like that, at all?

What if the ‘Founder of Bellingcat. Visiting research associate at King’s College London. Nonresident Senior Fellow – New Information Frontiers @AtlanticCouncil.‘ (his own Twitter description), isn’t really that?

Chauncey GardinerWhat if Eliot Higgins is, at best, a latter day Chauncey Gardiner , (pictured, the Peter Sellers character from film ‘Being There’ who rose to success on the back of mental limitations mistaken for genius)? Or what if it’s even worse – what if Higgins is actually a liar, a faker, a fraud?

Let’s have a look at a 10 Higgins bullet-points –

Higgins is from Leicester in the UK, born in 1979, He never finished college, dropping out of the Southampton Institute of Higher Education. When asked for interview what he studied at university, his answer was , “Media . . . I think.”

He once worked as payments officer at a women’s underwear company. (“I’m more interested in lingerie than asylum seekers,”). In 2012, the hardcore online gamer (a World of Warcraft addict), Higgins was laid off from his job as an administrator at a non-profit providing housing for asylum seekers, turns to blogging, under the pseudonym ‘Brown Moses‘, from a Frank Zappa track.

Сredited, by some, with uncovering chemical weapons in Syria in 2013. Whether he actually did this, is the subject of debate (what he is documented as doing is agreeing to suppress information that the rebels had chemical weapons, Eliot Higgins Bellingcatand were behind chemical weapon attacks on Aleppo which had killed civilians). In any case, Higgins’ chemical weapons revelations were enthusiastically disseminated across western media, the US, UN, glowingly endorsed by western governments, but comprehensively debunked by Theodore Postol, a professor in the Science, Technology, and Global Security Working Group at MIT –

“It’s clear and unambiguous this munition could not have come from Syrian government-controlled areas as the White House claimed.”

While the western media fell in love with tale of the ‘expert who exposed Syrian chemical weapons from his bedroom‘, other, real, experts (and Higgins has always been completely open about his lack of expertise) were less convinced. Higgins, Postol said, “has done a very nice job collecting information on a website. As far as his analysis, it’s so lacking any analytical foundation it’s clear he has no idea what he’s talking about.”

In January 2015, Bellingcat published a report into events in Mariupol, Ukraine, May 9th, 2014, when Ukrainian forces entered the city, opening fire, resulting in a death count given by Ukrainian sources as over 20, but by some sources as high as 100. Bellingcat took the figure down to 13. Despite video of Ukrainian forces opening fire on unarmed civilians, Bellingcat entirely exonerated them, described them as ‘acting with restraint’.

This exoneration of the actions of Ukrainian forces, and others of its kind, has allowed Eliot Higgins MH17western governments to continue their unconditional support for Ukraine, in the war in Donbass, without question.

Through 2015, Higgins’ Bellingcat rises to become one of the key agents in the MH17 investigation, with Higgins himself frequently trumpeting his appearances across the world’s media. This is despite Bellingcat’s frequently being caught out in fabrications – those MH17 videos which formed the bedrock of Bellingcat’s claims, comprehensively debunked here. Then there was the humiliation of Der Spiegel, one of Europe’s largest publications … issuing an apology for using Bellingcat’s work as a reliable source. German image forensics expert Jens Kriese tore Bellingcat apart here –

‘From the perspective of forensics, the Bellingcat approach is not very robust. The core of what they are doing is based on so-called Error Level Analysis (ELA). The Bellingcatmethod is subjective and not based entirely on science. This is why there is not a single scientific paper that addresses it. Contrary to what Bellingcat claims, Error Level Analysis does not provide clear results.

The conclusion is always based on the perspective of humans, on their interpretation.’This, along with stringent criticism from a range of sources – from the ‘Off-Guardian‘ site -‘Even casual conversation with him reveals the embarrassing truth that his “research”, so lauded in the popular media, consists of entry-level computer skills and an awful lot of smoke-blowing. You or I or literally anyone over the age of seven with internet access could do it. If we thought it was worth while.’

The criticism hasn’t just been limited to text, this German satirical programme did a quite unerring take-off of Higgins –

Higgins is actually becoming rather an internet joke –

These have done the rounds –

Eliot Higgins internet joke Eliot Higgins

And just have a look on Twitter with the search #Bellingcrap

Higgins either vehemently hates, or has been told to hate Russia, and Russia’s president Putin. Have a look at his Twitter timeline, of some 127,000 tweets, and it can read at times like one man trolling an entire country. A stream, a barrage, of anti-Russian tweets, retweets, and Higgins doesn’t even try to hide that he despises Russia, or has been told to – this just from a quick ‘Russia‘ search of his recent tweets, and just a small sampling –Screen CapturesWith this taken into account, what conclusion was Higgins’ Bellingcat ever going to come to, apart from that it was Russia, indeed Putin himself, responsible for the tragic downing of MH17? And for the ‘expert’ on Donbass, Higgins has made his feelings similarly clear –Fullscreen capture 28022016 163501.bmp

Higgins hates RT now, never missing a chance to tear into them. Typical tweet –Fullscreen capture 28022016 145812.bmpBut, he used to be proud of their endorsement – this, from 2013 – a list of media he was happy to advertise his connection to.Screen Captures1So what happened there? I’ve worked for RT, and will say this with all due respect, they are quite modest in the payment they offer. It’s not hard to find channels, and outlets, who pay a lot more.

In the early, Brown Moses, days, Higgins used to make frequent appeals for finances, with support links prominently displayed. However, the current Bellingcat site doesn’t even appear to have a ‘donate’ / ‘support’ option. And Fullscreen capture 28022016 154321.bmpBellingcat has grown to an operation which lists itself as being run by ‘eight volunteers’ but is clearly far in excess of that – a professional website which is updated sometimes with several articles a day, on which extensive research has been expended. But when it’s Bellingcat, all the evidence shows that the research is done to back up a conclusion already arrived at, rather than arrive at a conclusion based on research.

Higgins now works not from home, but from an office, in his hometown of Leicester. So where’s the money coming from for Bellingcat, clearly now an operation requiring considerable financial support?That’s unclear, Higgins has yet to publish any record of where the finance comes from, all the ‘About‘ section of the Bellingcat site says is -‘Bellingcat uses open source and social media investigation to investigate a variety of subjects, from Mexican drug lords to conflicts being fought across the world. Bellingcat brings together contributors who specialise in open source and social media investigation, and creates guides and case studies so others may learn to do the same.’

For a lot of people, it’s highly convenient that Eliot Higgins is an ‘expert’, and his agency Bellingcat taken seriously. This is a man who, with his agency Bellingcat, will absolutely always back the position of western governments, and powerful western organisations. And they’ll do whatever it takes to make sure Eliot Higgins expert 1he’s taken seriously, lay on all the the trappings, auspices of highbrow, on trend terms like ‘open source investigation’ and ‘error level analysis‘, be sure he’s given awards, plaudits, made a ‘fellow’, ‘expert’, at sympathetic organisations, appears at the right seminars, conferences, everything to apply the sheen of credibility.

When it comes to defending himself from criticism, Eliot is adept at deflecting criticism of himself onto the seemingly ‘too cool to criticise ‘open source investigation’, of which he is a leading practitioner. These tweets, from today, in response to his being told this article would be coming out –

Yet, what if behind the new, buzz ‘open source’ investigation of Higgins lies just plain old falsification?

This recent, absolutely comprehensive, article makes the point, one yet to have penetrated the public perception of ‘open source Fullscreen capture 28022016 152434.bmp
investigation’, that all this new jazz can be used as the respectable front for one of the oldest scams, falsification – see this tweet on the theme.

Creating social media accounts to post misinformation, free of all the source checks, verification of other sources as this is ‘citizen journalism’ and all things cool, which can’t be questioned because a lot of people don’t really know what they are. This, then passed off, and on, into Bellingcat, and up it goes higher into the food chain of mass media, unquestioned, unchecked.

So you can see why a lot of people really have an interest in making Eliot Higgins out to be an authority, a Fullscreen capture 28022016 153608.bmpreputed source, an expert. Have a look at his profile on the Atlantic Council site, an agency funded by governments across the world (25, no less), to promote their position under the guise of being a ‘think tank’. Higgins now works with them, and they call him ‘

There’s a real convenience about Higgins. He’s positioned himself as one of the foremost exponents of the still-being-defined ‘open source’. Higgins himself has shaped and defined what we currently know as ‘open source investigation’. And he’s made one of the tenets of it never, ever, needing to go to the place in question.

Eliot Higgins expert

Higgins has never been near the MH17 site, Syria, or anywhere else on where he’s an apparent ‘expert’. Higgins may not go to any of the places he ‘investigates’, but he does travel the world being an ‘expert’ at various conferences, receiving awards – all of these used (and used by Higgins himself, who doesn’t shy from self-promotion , making extensive mention on Twitter of his own participation at conferences, using a photo from such for his profile) to propagate ‘Higgins, the expert.

It’s very handy for some people, having a guy who doesn’t need to be sent anywhere, who, from his sofa, can quickly come up with the conclusions so beloved of western press, and governments. He’s also clearly a hard worker, dogmatic, persistent, the man who used to spend endless hours gaming now happy to spend that time on Bellingcat ‘investigations’. Higgins took part in the official MH17 investigation, and even boasted about knowing the result of the MH17 report before it was released – so sure was he, he even challenged me to a bet over it (I declined).

So, make your own mind up.

Who is Eliot Higgins, and Bellingcat, really? Are they indeed the experts the western media would have us believe? Or are we

Eliot Higgins Bellingcrapbeing stitched up by a man either of limited abilities plunged into the limelight, making the most of all that goes with it – fawning western media write ‘He often doesn’t finish sentences, as if his mind is racing elsewhere‘ – but could it be, that Higgins is actually rather simply rather a dim man, being used, and fine with that, by higher powers?

Bellingcat
Self described as a "Site for citizen investigations of current events using open source information". Begun by Eliot Higgins and "8 volunteers" and allegedly funded by a Kickstarter campaign.
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Bellingcat

https://bellingcat.com
Started: 2014
Founder: Eliot Higgins
In its own words:
"By and for citizen investigative journalists..."

Bellingcat is an amateur run, supposedly independent, source of image analyses on controversial images. Its operator, Eliot Higgins has been praised by The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian. However, Robert Parry termed Bellingcat's analysis of satellite photos related to the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 an "amateurish [and] anti-Russian... fraud".[1] Another commentator claimed that Higgins has constantly been a source of dis/misinformation on Syria and Ukraine: "It's not so much ‘Bellingcat’ as ‘smell a rat’."[2]
Contents [hide]
1 Background of founder
2 Funding
2.1 Wikispooks comment
3 Skripal poisoning
3.1 Identifying the suspects
3.2 "Shilling for the security services"
4 Syria
4.1 Source of disinformation
4.2 James Foley fake video
5 Flight MH17
5.1 Ukrainian Forces BUK column
5.2 Sergey Paschenko
5.3 Buks on Ukraine Military TV
5.4 BUK #312 at night
5.5 Torez BUK article conclusions
5.6 Mystery MH17 Buk in transit
6 Related Document
7 References
8 External links
Background of founder
In Oct 2012, Eliot Higgins was laid off from his job as an administrator at a nonprofit organisation which provided housing for asylum seekers. In Aug 2013, he noticed Twitter reports of a possible chemical-weapons attack in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus.[citation needed] In Nov 2013, Eliot Higgins "confirmed" that Syria had used chemical weapons[3], without noticing that it was not the Syrian government that carried out the attacks[4].
Funding
On 15 July 2014, Eliot Higgins started Bellingcat for citizen journalism to investigate current events using open source information such as videos, maps and pictures. It was funded by a KickStarter campaign (£50,891 at 13 Sep 2014 from 1,701 contributions)[5]. The Kickstarter funding model is based on a cash-for gifts/favours model: backers "get to choose from a variety of unique rewards offered by the project creator. Rewards vary from project to project ..."[6]
Also of possible note: Kickstarter "Projects can’t mislead people or misrepresent facts, and creators should be candid about what they plan to accomplish"[7]. From the project home page: "bellingcat.com will unite citizen investigative journalists to use open source information to report on issues that are being ignored . . . Bellingcat will be an extension of Eliot’s work on the Brown Moses blog."[8]
Until the creation of Bellingcat, the 'Brown Moses blog' had not been concerned with events in Ukraine.[9] Another difference is that whereas the Brown Moses blog was non-commercial, Bellingcat is now obviously a commercial venture.
Wikispooks comment
Higgins had stumbled into a potentially profitable (in terms of media exposure and possibly pledged funding) publishing venture. If it clearly wasn't primed to be a mega-publishing opportunity, it nonetheless held the promise of some tempting liaisons with the Spooks for one so young. And so it has turned out, with Higgins very well knowing the expectations of those whose support he depends on. His output has been nothing if not consistent, viz: Consistent with what one would expect from promoters of the Anglo-US-NATO Official Narratives of geo-politics and the War on Terror, but done in a slipshod and blatantly partisan fashion that those who quote him (the Commercially-controlled media) are wary of claiming their own; which is to say in a way which is quotable but can not be made attributable to those who ultimately control the narrative - ie the Spooks.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights serves an analogous purpose.
Skripal poisoning
On 26 September 2018, Theresa May addressed the United Nations General Assembly and spoke at a special meeting of the UN Security Council chaired by Donald Trump. She said:
“This decision [to bomb Syria] also sent a clear message to the Assad regime: perpetrators of chemical weapons use cannot escape identification. The regime’s backers must use their influence to ensure chemical weapons are not used again. For there must be no doubt: we will respond swiftly and appropriately if they are.”
The Prime Minister also attacked Russia for its desperate fabrication over the Salisbury poisoning.
Identifying the suspects
Timed to coincide with Theresa May's speech, Bellingcat published a blog post entitled "Skripal Suspect Boshirov Identified as GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga":
"Bellingcat and its investigative partner the Russia Insider have established conclusively the identity of one of the suspects in the poisoning of Sergey and Yulia Skripal, and in the homicide of British citizen Dawn Sturgess.
"Part 1 and Part 2 of Bellingcat’s investigation into the Skripal poisoning suspects are available for background information. In these previous two parts of the investigation, Bellingcat and the Insider concluded that the two suspects – traveling internationally and appearing on Russian television under the aliases 'Ruslan Boshirov' and 'Alexander Petrov' – are in fact undercover officers of the Russian Military Intelligence, widely known as GRU.
"Bellingcat has been able to confirm the actual identity of one of the two officers. The suspect using the cover identity of 'Ruslan Boshirov' is in fact Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga, a highly decorated GRU officer bestowed with Russia’s highest state award, Hero of the Russian Federation. Following Bellingcat’s own identification, multiple sources familiar with the person and/or the investigation have confirmed the suspect’s identity.
"This finding eliminates any remaining doubt that the two suspects in the Novichok poisonings were in fact Russian officers operating on a clandestine government mission."[10]
"Shilling for the security services"

Russian 'businessmen' Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov caught on CCTV in March 2018
In a series of blog posts*, Craig Murray ridiculed "the claims of neo-conservative propaganda website Bellingcat":
"To get a UK visa Boshirov and Petrov would have had to attend the UK Visa Application Centre in Moscow. There not only would their photographs be taken, but their fingerprints would have been taken and, if in the last few years, their irises scanned. The Metropolitan Police would naturally have obtained their fingerprints from the Visa Application.
"One thing of which we can be certain is that their fingerprints are not on the perfume bottle or packaging found in Charlie Rowley’s home. We can be certain of that because no charges have been brought against the two in relation to the death of Dawn Sturgess, and we know the police have their fingerprints. The fact of there being no credible evidence, according to either the Metropolitan Police or the Crown Prosecution Service, to link them to the Amesbury poisoning, has profound implications.
"Why the Metropolitan Police were so coy about telling us what kind of visa the pair held, points to a wider mystery. Why were they given the visas in the first place, and what story did they tell to get them? It is not easy for a Russian citizen, particularly an economically active male, to get past the UK Border Agency. The visa application process is very intrusive. They have to produce evidence of family and professional circumstances, including employment and address, evidence of funds, including at least three months of bank statements, and evidence of the purpose of the visit. These details are then actively checked out by the Visa Department.
"If they had told the story to the visa section they told to Russia Today, that they were freelance traders in fitness products wanting to visit Salisbury Cathedral, they would have been refused a visa as being candidates for overstaying. They would have been judged not to have sufficiently stable employment in Russia to ensure they would return. So what story did Petrov and Boshirov give on their visa application, why were they given a visa, and what kind of visa? And why do the British authorities not want us to know the answer to these questions?
"Which brings us to the claims of neo-conservative propaganda website Bellingcat. They claim together with the Russia Insider website to have obtained documentary evidence that Petrov and Boshirov’s passports were of a series issued only to Russian spies, and that their applications listed GRU headquarters as their address.
"There are some problems with Bellingcat’s analysis. The first is that they also quote Russian website fontanka.ru as a source, but fontanka.ru actually say the precise opposite of what Bellingcat claim – that the passport number series is indeed a civilian one and civilians do have passports in that series.
"Fontanka also state it is not unusual for the two to have close passport numbers – it merely means they applied together. On other points, fontanka.ru do confirm Bellingcat’s account of another suspected GRU officer having serial numbers close to those of Boshirov and Petrov.
"But there is a bigger question of the authenticity of the documents themselves. Fontanka.ru is a blind alley – they are not the source of the documents, just commenting on them, and Bellingcat are just attempting the old trick of setting up a circular “confirmation”. The Russia Insider is neither Russian nor an Insider. Its name is a false claim and it consists of a combination of western “experts” writing on Russia, and reprints from the Russian media. It has no track record of inside access to Russian government secrets or documents, and nor does Bellingcat.
"What Bellingcat does have is a track record of 'shilling for the security services'. Bellingcat claims its purpose is to clear up fake news, yet has been entirely opaque about the real source of its so-called documents.
"MI6 have almost 40 officers in Russia, running hundreds of agents. The CIA has a multiple of that. They pool their information. Both the UK and US have large visa sections whose major function is the analysis of Russian passports, their types and numbers and what they tell about the individual.
"We are to believe that Boshirov and Petrov were GRU agents whose identity was plainly obvious from their passports, who had no believable cover identities, but that neither the visa department nor MI6 (which two cooperate closely and all the time) knew they were giving visas to GRU agents. Yet this information was readily available to Bellingcat?"[11]
The Strange Russian Alibi
Lynch Mob Mentality
The Impossible Photo
The Incredible Case of Boshirov and Petrov’s Visas
“Boshirov” is probably not “Chepiga”. But he is also not “Boshirov”.
Syria
Two years after political protests turned violent in March 2011,[12] Bellingcat started reporting on Syria primarily analysing the factions at war, and what weapons and armour they utilised, as well as news that would normally go unreported by the mainstream media. Bellingcat claimed it was utilising a network of contributors who specialise in open source and social media investigation, and creating guides and case studies so others may learn to do the same.[13]
Source of disinformation
In July 2014, Bellingcat published what it claimed was evidence of chemical weapons being used on Syrian civilians, including children.[14] Collecting videos from local sources, Higgins analysed the footage and deduced that chlorine gas was dropped from helicopters by the Syrian Arab Army.
In June 2016, Bellingcat published an article showing the use of cluster munitions being used against the rebels, claiming the munitions used were identical to those used by the Russian military.[15]
In February 2017, Bellingcat published an article detailing how rudimentary drones were being used by ISIS to drop explosives onto opposition targets. Analysing footage from Twitter and other social media platforms, it was claimed the drones were dropping modified 40mm grenades.[16]
In March 2017 Bellingcat published an investigative report on the bombing of a mosque in Aleppo that claimed the lives of over 50 civilians. The article included photographs of the remnants of the bomb used, and showed that the piece was identical to that of similar bombs used by the US military.[17]
James Foley fake video
On 23 Aug 2014, Bellingcat made an estimate of the exact location where the James Foley execution video was made (outside Raqqa, a reported Islamic State stronghold in north-central Syria)[18], yet failed to notice that the video itself was a fake.[19] [20]. See also: Turkish_Trailer.
Flight MH17
On 18 Jul 2014, Bellingcat "Found The Buk Missile Launcher That Downed Flight MH17" - though the photograph, widely claimed to have been taken in the town of Snizhne, was actually taken in the town of Torez and under weather conditions significantly different to those on the day of the Malaysia Airlines crash.[21] [22] Eliot Higgins (proprietor of Bellingcat: known for investigative social media and weapons analysis) didn't consider when the photograph was taken to be important. The photo used by Bellingcat in the "investigation" as to the location of the BUK was uploaded on 18 July 2014 at 18:26:41. This "investigation" as to the location of the BUK" is an unusual way to go about things. Why not simply ask the person who took it or whoever supplied it? And why not ask when it was taken?
2014 Jul 18, 8:36 PM: Within a minute or so of Brown Moses tweeting that the Buk had been geolocated to Torez, James Miller (managing editor of Interpretermag) commented: "cool. Where?"[23]. James Miller, coincidentally, had been asked to geolocate the image (which appears to have originated from the Ukrainian Interior Ministry) only the day before[24].
Ukrainian Forces BUK column

Ukrainian Forces BUKcolumn
Still from a video taken in March 2014, when Ukrainian media reported the country’s military was concentrating air defences closer to the Russian border to repel an “invasion”. Includes Kiev air-defence system no.312.
Sergey Paschenko

Sergey Paschenko selfie.jpg
Captioned by the Daily Mail as: "Is this the smoking gun? This picture has emerged of a pro-Russian rebel posing in front of the same type of BUK missile launcher that is believed to have shot down MH17" Though, actually, it is a Ukrainian Army conscript guarding Ukrainian Army Buks.
Buks on Ukraine Military TV

Buks on Ukrainian Military-TV
Broadcast the evening prior to Flight MH17: a Buk-system in training/preparation - complete with radar.
BUK #312 at night

Ukrainian Forces BUK #312 at night
On July 19 Kiev’s Security Service (SBU) published photos online it claimed showed ‘Russia’ secretly withdrawing a BUK-M (NATO designation SA-11) surface-to-air missile system from the Ukraine civil war zone. Shortly after publishing this article, the photo in question was deleted. The photo was actually a still from video of a Kiev air-defence system no.312, filmed in March this year at Yasinovataya, north of Donetsk.[25] BUK #312 is mounted on a civilian transporter.
Torez BUK article conclusions
With the Kiev government having 27 BUK systems and the dissidents having (allegedly) one Russian-supplied and crewed system, it is statistically more likely to have been a Kiev BUK fired at MH17, especially considering Ukraine Air Defence expertise.
Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 (a commercial flight) was shot down by the Ukrainian military over the Black Sea on 4 October 2001. Ukraine banned the testing of Buk, S-300 and similar missile systems for a period of 7 years following this incident. Ukraine’s acting Defence Minister Ihor Tenyukh described the combat readiness of the country’s armed forces as “unsatisfactory” in his 12 March 2014 report to the acting president. Tenyukh said recent exercises demonstrated a “dismal degree of preparedness among servicemen and lack of military specialists, equipment and weapons” in the Ground Forces, the Air Force and the Navy. The country’s air defense troops had received little training because of the 2001 ban on missile launches imposed after the crash of a Russian Tu-154 passenger jet. The ban was lifted in 2008, but so far only 10 percent of Air Defence Forces servicemen “have mastered the required level of theory and practice,” the report said. [26][27][28]. The Ukrainian military had several batteries of Buk surface-to-air missile systems with at least 27 launchers, capable of bringing down high-flying jets, in the Donetsk region where the Malaysian passenger plane crashed, Russian Defense Ministry said [29].
The only thing that the Bellingcat investigation shows is that a particular photograph they were supplied with is of an area in Torez. Without knowing when this photo was taken, it proves nothing about Bellingcat's claim that it "Found The Buk Missile Launcher That Downed Flight MH17". Bellingcat accepted, without question, the line it was fed from Kiev that it was taken on the morning of 17 July. Bellingcat did not consider any other possible sightings of BUKs in the area. It is a straightforward case of cherry-picking "One Photograph" (Bellingcat's own words) to justify a story.
Mystery MH17 Buk in transit

Paris Match caption: "A guided missile sytem BUK is photopgraphed by team Paris-Match in the suburbs of Donetsk, on the road to Snizhne the morning of July 17, just hours before the crash of Flight Malaysia Airlines MH17."
On 08 Sep 204, Bellingcat claimed "New evidence has been found that shows the Buk missile system that was used to shoot down MH17 on the 17th of July came from Russia, and was most likely operated by Russian soldiers."[30].
The first source quoted for there being a Russian BUK in Ukraine is a Paris-Match photo in the suburbs of Donetsk in the morning of 17 July. Russian satellite images show several BUK systems in the Donetsk area prior to MH17[31] but Bellingcat does not appear to have geolocated these or the Paris-Match video-frame.
Full article "here via GoogleTranslate" published July 25, 2014 | Updated July 29, 2014

BUK on the H21 main road
Transporter-loaded BUK on the H21 main road from Donetsk to Torez. From YouTube Published on Jul 17, 2014, supposedly filmed at 11:40am on July 17th, geolocated to 48.017050, 38.301678 by Bellingcat (about 25km and 50 minutes from the next photo-op in Torez at 48.02448, 38.61451):

The photo used by Bellingcat in the "investigation" that "Found The Buk Missile Launcher That Downed Flight MH17"
Note that it is on what appears to be the same civilian transporter, on a sunny day and headed away from the alleged launch site.
A photograph, allegedly "made at the time of launching rockets in the vicinity. Between Torez and Snizhne, which should be clearly visible inversion missiles, which shot down "Boeing-777" ... (interpreted from none-too clear GoogleTranslate Ukrainian-to-English translation) was released by the Ukraine Security Service. Note the clear conditions compared to the actual conditions at the time MH17 was shot down.

Alleged BUK launch against MH17
A BBC film crew went to locate this location and had the following to say:
"To find the place from which the smoke was allegedly coming from, we adopted as markers these three poplars and the group of trees. Presumably, this is the place that can be seen on the photograph published by the SBU. And here are our markers: the three solitary poplars and the small group of trees in the distance. The smoke that can be seen on the photograph came from somewhere over there [pointing behind her], behind my back. The SBU believes that this is a trace coming from the launch of a “BUK” missile. However, it must be noted that there are here, approximately in the same place, the Saur-Mogila memorial, near which the fighting continues almost unabated, and a coalmine. It turns out that the smoke with the same degree of probability could have been coming from any of these locations."
This BBC report was deleted shortly afterwards but later reinstated in edited format. See: BBC Russia MH17 report
Based on the BBC report, the launch is alleged to have occurred around here, which is about 30km from the nearest Russian border checkpoint, in Marynivki, avoiding major roads (geolocated photo).
Early the following morning, it is alleged to have been in Luhansk (by The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine/Bellingcat) and heading towards the Russian border, which is not the ideal route for getting from Torez to Russia. The Paris-Match caption for this photo says "The same truck photographed at dawn on Friday, July 18, 2014 by a surveillance camera in the city of Krasnodon, close to the Russian border, according to this image circulated by the Ukrainian intelligence." Krasnodon is in the Oblast of Luhansk, about 40km SE of Luhansk city. The civilian transporter is just passing a Bogdan Auto billboard. It appears to be the same truck.
On July 22, Ukraine's Minister of Internal Affairs, Arsen Avakov, gave the exact coordinates of the video’s location: separatist-held Luhansk, about a 45-minute drive from Krasnodon.[32] as 48.545760°, 39.264622°map (about 70 metres from where this photo was taken) 1.5km off the nearest M04 junction and heading towards Kiev-controlled areas: 7km from Roskoshnoye (which was "Claimed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence to be liberated from separatist forces as of July 14") and 21 km from Luhansk Airport (which was not abandoned by Ukrainian forces until September 1)[1].
It is shown on a civilian transporter, whereas those shown in Russia are on military transporters. The BUK has a white patch on its right-hand side and no railings - like one seen in Russia in June: basically, that's it.
On July 19 Kiev’s Security Service (SBU) published photos online that it claimed showed ‘Russia’ secretly withdrawing a BUK-M (NATO designation SA-11) surface-to-air missile system from the Ukraine civil war zone. At the time SBU Chief Vitaly Naida declared to a mute press“The SBU has taken measures within the investigation and is getting clear evidence of Russian citizens’ involvement in the terrorist attack (on the Malaysian Airlines Boeing)”.

SBU evidence on 19 Jul 2014
However, bloggers immediately spotted the photos were of a Kiev air-defense system no. 312, previously pictured in March this year, when several BUK-M systems were filmed at Yasinovataya, north of Donetsk. The Ukrainian "evidence" photos show a single missile launch vehicle, whereas a Buk-M complex consists of at least three vehicles: missile launcher, radar and command vehicle. Ideally, a transporter loader vehicle would also form part of the system. This Ukraine SBU "evidence" shows two different transporters (with and without a blue flash on the cab. With one of the two photos (obviously faked and later removed) being submitted by the Ukraine SBU as "evidence", Bellingcat would reasonably have been expected to question the first one.
This "new evidence" has been manipulated into the Wikipedia article, courtesy of the accounts: My very best wishes, Sayerslle, Geogene, Stickee and Martinevans123 [2] [3]

In 2016, I’ll be returning to my country of the UK, and there’s a man I’d certainly like to meet for an interview. While I was working on the scene from the war in Eliot Higgins 2Donbass, Eliot Higgins, of Bellingcat, was the man sitting on a sofa taking, and manipulating, YouTube videos (including my own) of Donbass, MH17, Syria, using them to disseminate misinformation, lies, to the world.

However, he’s unlikely ever to agree to an interview with me, because, you see, Higgins, from the UK, born 1979, avoids sources who may raise uncomfortable questions much like critics have accused his work of avoiding basis in science, or fact (see below for more on that).

So, who exactly is Eliot Higgins? The man western media fawn over to the extent you may think it’s Eliot’s own mum writing the press, with headlines like ‘Putin’s Fullscreen capture 28022016 123353.bmpMH17 Nemesis‘ and ‘One-Man Intelligence Unit‘ (and that, enthusiastically promoted by the UK government in Ukraine, and not only them – US, Estonian government sources and more, open fans of his work).

Well, this is how a standard Eliot Higgins piece, and they are manifold, begins, in the western press – ‘As rockets fell in Syria Eliot Higgins was asleep at his house 2,300 miles away, in Leicester. He woke a few hours later, roused his toddler daughter, Ela, and padded downstairs to make her porridge.’

That from the Telegraph, March 29th, 2014. Higgins affectionately portrayed as a kind of Winnie the Pooh meets a Beautiful Mind as he goes on to crack the enigma which had eluded the world etc etc.

Here, the Independent from January 18th, 2015 –

Eliot Higgins 1‘Any of us can pause a YouTube video or find an old friend on Facebook. But only one man has used these simple online tools to expose the world’s darkest secrets. No wonder everyone from the police to Google wants a piece of the blogger from Leicester.’

Newsweek – from June 2015 –

‘Sipping a can of beer and devouring french fries in a Brussels hotel room, Eliot Higgins doesn’t look like the type to get involved in armed conflicts. The Englishman has a baby face, slumped shoulders and a soft Midlands accent. But over the past three years, the 36-year-old former administrator and obsessive gamer has spent hundreds of hours scouring the Internet to find out the truth about faraway wars – from the use of chemical weapons in Syria to Russian troops invading Ukraine – all from the comfort of his couch.’

But what if it’s not really like that, at all?

What if the ‘Founder of Bellingcat. Visiting research associate at King’s College London. Nonresident Senior Fellow – New Information Frontiers @AtlanticCouncil.‘ (his own Twitter description), isn’t really that?

Chauncey GardinerWhat if Eliot Higgins is, at best, a latter day Chauncey Gardiner , (pictured, the Peter Sellers character from film ‘Being There’ who rose to success on the back of mental limitations mistaken for genius)? Or what if it’s even worse – what if Higgins is actually a liar, a faker, a fraud?

Let’s have a look at a 10 Higgins bullet-points –

Higgins is from Leicester in the UK, born in 1979, He never finished college, dropping out of the Southampton Institute of Higher Education. When asked for interview what he studied at university, his answer was , “Media . . . I think.”

He once worked as payments officer at a women’s underwear company. (“I’m more interested in lingerie than asylum seekers,”). In 2012, the hardcore online gamer (a World of Warcraft addict), Higgins was laid off from his job as an administrator at a non-profit providing housing for asylum seekers, turns to blogging, under the pseudonym ‘Brown Moses‘, from a Frank Zappa track.

Сredited, by some, with uncovering chemical weapons in Syria in 2013. Whether he actually did this, is the subject of debate (what he is documented as doing is agreeing to suppress information that the rebels had chemical weapons, Eliot Higgins Bellingcatand were behind chemical weapon attacks on Aleppo which had killed civilians). In any case, Higgins’ chemical weapons revelations were enthusiastically disseminated across western media, the US, UN, glowingly endorsed by western governments, but comprehensively debunked by Theodore Postol, a professor in the Science, Technology, and Global Security Working Group at MIT –

“It’s clear and unambiguous this munition could not have come from Syrian government-controlled areas as the White House claimed.”

While the western media fell in love with tale of the ‘expert who exposed Syrian chemical weapons from his bedroom‘, other, real, experts (and Higgins has always been completely open about his lack of expertise) were less convinced. Higgins, Postol said, “has done a very nice job collecting information on a website. As far as his analysis, it’s so lacking any analytical foundation it’s clear he has no idea what he’s talking about.”

In January 2015, Bellingcat published a report into events in Mariupol, Ukraine, May 9th, 2014, when Ukrainian forces entered the city, opening fire, resulting in a death count given by Ukrainian sources as over 20, but by some sources as high as 100. Bellingcat took the figure down to 13. Despite video of Ukrainian forces opening fire on unarmed civilians, Bellingcat entirely exonerated them, described them as ‘acting with restraint’.

This exoneration of the actions of Ukrainian forces, and others of its kind, has allowed Eliot Higgins MH17western governments to continue their unconditional support for Ukraine, in the war in Donbass, without question.

Through 2015, Higgins’ Bellingcat rises to become one of the key agents in the MH17 investigation, with Higgins himself frequently trumpeting his appearances across the world’s media. This is despite Bellingcat’s frequently being caught out in fabrications – those MH17 videos which formed the bedrock of Bellingcat’s claims, comprehensively debunked here. Then there was the humiliation of Der Spiegel, one of Europe’s largest publications … issuing an apology for using Bellingcat’s work as a reliable source. German image forensics expert Jens Kriese tore Bellingcat apart here –

‘From the perspective of forensics, the Bellingcat approach is not very robust. The core of what they are doing is based on so-called Error Level Analysis (ELA). The Bellingcatmethod is subjective and not based entirely on science. This is why there is not a single scientific paper that addresses it. Contrary to what Bellingcat claims, Error Level Analysis does not provide clear results.

The conclusion is always based on the perspective of humans, on their interpretation.’This, along with stringent criticism from a range of sources – from the ‘Off-Guardian‘ site -‘Even casual conversation with him reveals the embarrassing truth that his “research”, so lauded in the popular media, consists of entry-level computer skills and an awful lot of smoke-blowing. You or I or literally anyone over the age of seven with internet access could do it. If we thought it was worth while.’

The criticism hasn’t just been limited to text, this German satirical programme did a quite unerring take-off of Higgins –

Eliot Higgins aka Brown Moses, the founder of Bellingcat "by and for citizen investigative journalists", is beloved by NATO media. Higgins is always able to "prove" by amateur "analysis" of open source data that the "bad guys", just as the U.S. or NATO claim, did indeed do the bad thing that happened. The problem is that Higgins is no expert of anything. He was an unemployed office worker who looked at Youtube videos from Syria and tried Internet searches to find out what weapons were visible in the videos. That is all that made him an "expert".

But Higgins claimed to prove that the Syrian government launched rockets with Sarin on Ghouta, an area south of Damascus. An MIT professor and real expert proved (pdf) that he was wrong.

Higgins claimed to "prove" that rockets launched from Russia hit Ukraine by looking at aerial pictures of impact craters. But a real expert of the method said that crater analysis is “highly experimental and prone to inaccuracy” and warned against its use without further corroboration.

Now another "expert" of Bellingcat, who's source of "expertise" is unknown but likely also low, tries to prove that Russia manipulated some aerial pictures it published about the MH17 airline incident in Ukraine. That made some splash in the usual NATO media but is complete nonsense. Yes, the pictures were obviously "manipulated" as labels were added to them. But that the visual content of the pictures were changed, as the "expert" claimed to prove by a JPEG compression analysis, is clearly bs. The "expert" claims that "all image content should present roughly the same [compression] error levels if the photo has not been altered." That is nonsense. JPEG compresses a flat white surface with low error level and a rough multicolor part of a picture with a higher compression error level. That is digital compression 101 which I myself learned when I was doing a bit of math work on the early PNG format definition. So it turns out that the "expert" simply does not understand how JPEG compression works.

Out of three big "finds" that made it into the media Higgins and Bellingcat had three that were proven to be wrong by real experts. Any media who further quote "analysis" by the "experts" Higgins and Bellingcat should be regarded as propaganda outlet and not as a serious source of news.

In total, 559 pages and 251 personal accounts were instantly removed from the platform, for having “consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior” according to Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity and former White House National Security Council Director of Cybersecurity Policy under Obama. This is but one of similar yet smaller purges that have been unfolding in front of our eyes over the last year, all in the name of fighting “fake news” and so called “Russian propaganda”. What very few people know though, is that about 5 months ago, Facebook announced that is was officially partnering with the Atlantic Council in the form of an “election partnership […] to prevent [their] service from being abused during elections.” Indeed, the US midterm elections are only a couple of weeks away, so the Atlantic Council and its Digital Forensic Research Lab are now going at it with full force, closing Facebook accounts left and right that they personally deem could be fake accounts, or accounts spreading misinformation, based on very shady criteria.

One doesn’t need to look far to understand who the Atlantic Council are and what they stand for : it is a think tank essentially funded by NATO, weapons manufacturers, Middle-Eastern oil-state monarchies, billionaires and different branches of the US military. In short, it has been described as being nothing less than NATO’s unofficial propaganda wing. The Atlantic Council doesn’t shy away from its political intents across the world, which can be seen solely by looking at who sits on its directors board – the crème de la crème when it comes to US neocons & war criminals: Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice, Frank Carlucci, James A. Baker, R. George P. Shultz, James Woolsey, Leon Panetta, Colin Powell, Robert Gates, and many more.

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